Custom Software Cost Calculator
Pick a project type, complexity band, and feature set to get a planning-stage cost and timeline range. It's the same estimation model our own scoping team starts from, free, with no signup and no email gate.
Everything runs in your browser. Nothing you select is stored, sent anywhere, or followed by a sales call. The output is a range with stated assumptions, not a quote, and the full methodology is published below.
Based on a blended rate of $35-$55/hour and typical scope for each project type. Excludes ongoing maintenance, third-party costs, and legal review. This is a planning estimate, not a quote. Get a precise number from our team below.
How this calculator works, and where it stops
A calculator you can't interrogate is just a lead form with arithmetic attached. Here is exactly how the number is produced, and the boundaries where it stops being useful.
How the estimate is calculated
Every estimate starts from a base effort for your project type, from roughly 300 engineering hours for a lean MVP up to 1,400 for a multi-module enterprise platform. A complexity multiplier then scales that base, from 0.8x for simple builds to 1.9x for enterprise-grade ones, and each feature you select adds a fixed effort allowance on top. The total is priced at a blended rate of 35 to 55 US dollars per engineering hour, the realistic band for a senior nearshore team, and the timeline assumes a small team shipping about 60 hours a week, with a four-week floor because nothing serious ships faster than that.
Why you get a range, not a number
Any single figure produced before discovery is false precision, so the calculator refuses to give you one. The low end assumes a smooth build with the stated scope; the high end absorbs the friction that real projects reliably produce. In our proposal history, most projects land inside this kind of range, which makes it a defensible baseline to put in a budget document before any vendor conversation, including one with us.
What it deliberately can't see
A five-minute form can't weigh legacy data migrations, third-party API constraints, or regulatory work under frameworks like SAMA, TRA, or HIPAA, and any of those can move a real estimate by 15 to 30 percent. It also prices building the software, not running your organization's change management around it. When your decision is close, the honest next step is a scoping conversation, not a more elaborate calculator.
How to use the result in procurement
Treat the range as a vendor-vetting instrument. A proposal far below your low end almost always means testing, project management, or post-launch support was quietly cut, and that cost has not disappeared, it has been deferred to a change order. A proposal far above your high end needs to justify the premium in writing. Either way, you're negotiating from evidence instead of reacting to whichever number arrived first.
Got your range? Send us the same inputs and we’ll turn them into a written estimate with every assumption spelled out. Want the reasoning behind the model first? Read how we estimate custom software costs before you book anything.